The owners of the Ritz Hotel and the Telegraph Media Group are set to take control of the Irish hotel group that owns Claridges, with the acquisition of troubled Irish property investor Derek Quinlan's 35% stake.

Last Friday the Barclay brothers confirmed they were buying a 24.8% stake from Coroin, the parent of the Maybourne group which owns Claridges, the Connaught and the Berkeley Hotels.

And now it has emerged they are also buying Quinlan's stake.

The former tax inspector, who was once dubbed by the Wall Street Journal as "Europe's realty tsar", had little choice but to sell. One of Ireland's most prominent property investors during the Celtic Tiger years, he amassed a major portfolio of trophy assets in London including a retail block in Knightsbridge, property in Mayfair's Savile Row and in Canary Wharf, where he and a British partner, Glen Maude, splashed out £1bn for the tower occupied by Citibank.

Quinlan, who is now based in Switzerland, is selling everything in sight in an effort to clear alleged debts of €600m (£518m).

Overseas, his most spectacular acquisition was a 400-acre site occupied by Banco Santander in Madrid which was bought for a record €1.9bn just after the market peaked in 2008.

The property is now on the market, as is the Citibank tower, which has just gone up for sale with a price tag of around £1bn.

The sale of Quinlan's stake in the five-star hotel group combined with the sale of the retail block between Harvey Nichols and Harrods (sold last year) will help clear significant debts now housed in Ireland's National Asset Management Agency.

Sources in Dublin say negotiations with the Barclays began before Christmas.

Back at the Maybourne group, there is speculation that the Barclay brothers will now swoop on the biggest shareholder, Irish property investor Paddy McKillen.

He owns 37% of the group and has taken a much closer personal interest in its running. He is currently trying to expand Claridges with a 40-room extension.

However, there is a €660m debt hanging over the group requiring refinancing by the end of January and this, no doubt, is part of the negotiation. The debt had matured at the end of December but Maybourne was given an extra month by NAMA to refinance.

McKillen's relationship with NAMA, to say the least, is currently under the spotlight for another reason.

He took a landmark case against NAMA in the Irish courts last year arguing that none of his loans should be transferred to the bad bank as they were all performing well. He lost his case but was allowed a limited appeal and is currently awaiting judgment from the supreme court.

It is not just the high-rollers like McKillen who find themselves in the courts these days.

Shopkeeper with no property experience given €31.8m loan

The property development bug spread to all corners of society during the boom and the high court in Dublin is packed with cases of banks pursuing developers.

Yesterday the courts heard how a shopkeeper, who had no previous experience in property development, was given a €31.8m loan to build a shopping centre in County Monaghan,

The shopping centre is completed and has some tenants but is not full and Zurich Bank is now pursuing Jim McConnon for unpaid loans.

Upstairs, there was standing room only in court 16 which was packed to the rafters with barristers and solicitors pushing their case for bankruptcy and repossessions.

Many of the cases were adjourned, but the flavour was much in the same.

On one case, two brothers had bought land for around €36m. They had paid off around €30m but still owed €5.8m to the banks who were now trying to recover their debt. Their debts are now in NAMA and they asked the courts to postpone their case until their business plan was approved by the agency which, the court heard, could take three months.

In another, a man had nine properties in Poland at stake. In another case, a businessman told the court he "desperately wanted to make restitution" but needed extra time to pay off debts of €1.1m to €1.2m. He had gathered €200,000 from family and friends in cash and had offered charges on various properties and a business in the US to try to clear the debt further down the line. The case was adjourned.

Anglo now doing home mortgages

There's a curious story in today's Irish Independent. Weeks after the governor of the central bank, Patrick Honohan, told how Anglo Irish Bank was going to be closed completely, it emerges that Anglo is now providing residential mortgages for the first time.

It is reported they are doing this to help developers who are unable to sell apartment blocks provide finance for potential customers.